The Registry team beat tough competition to win the award at The Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards 2012, honouring the sector’s finest leaders, managers and administrators.

In a night of success Christ Church also won the Commercial Collaboration Award at this year’s Culture Awards, in Canterbury, for its partnership with Whitstable animation studio, Animate & Create.

Speaking after the THE awards ceremony, Lorri Currie, Academic Registrar for the University, said: “I am delighted with this achievement by our staff. It is an enormous vote of confidence for our department from the sector. Despite the challenges and difficulties we often face, it shows that we have a team who demonstrate professional abilities, resilience and determination to provide a high quality service to our students and staff.”

Christ Church was nominated for the Times Higher Education award following successful implementation of service changes in response to a period of rapid institutional growth and internal and external pressures.

The changes were designed to modernise the student administration processes across the institution and enhance and improve the student experience. They include an on-line service provision leading to faster turn-around times of students’ requests; an electronic call-logging system; a fully integrated on-line pre-registration process; an automatically generated system for the issue and dissemination of student smartcards and activation of computer accounts; and the move towards creation of Registry Offices for the Faculties.

The successful implementation of the changes has also led to visits from other UK and overseas institutions looking to learn from the University’s experiences and to see good practice in action.

Judge Ken Sloan, Registrar at the University of Warwick, said: “The Canterbury entry demonstrated real breadth and depth of innovation across the entire registry team, which made it stand out above the other submissions”.

The University’s second award of the evening was presented at a ceremony at Augustine House, Canterbury.

The Culture Awards were created to recognise the important role culture plays within the communities of the Canterbury District and to celebrate the broad cultural scene in the City and across East Kent.

The partnership between the University and Animate & Create won the Commercial Collaboration Award for ‘showing a mutually beneficial and productive partnership’ between organisations.

Dan Richards, Creative Director of Animate & Create, said: “Winning a Canterbury Culture Award for our partnership with Canterbury Christ Church University is great recognition for our relationship. Christ Church is an integral part of all of our projects from animation production to educational workshops, and also our animation festival. We’ve been working with the University for five years and this award highlights the mutual benefits in our shared resources and knowledge.

“We hope to build on this collaboration further in the coming year with the University playing host and sponsoring Canterbury Anifest 2012 in Augustine House in October.”

Animate & Create and Canterbury Christ Church University have worked together since early 2007, when Animate & Create was formed, before forming an official partnership in 2010. Both organisations share a common goal in the promotion of learning, teaching and student employability through cultural activity.

Notes to Editor

Canterbury Christ Church University

Canterbury Christ Church University is a modern university with a particular strength in higher education for the public services.

With nearly 20,000 students, and five campuses across Kent and Medway, its courses span a wide range of academic and professional subject areas.

We are the third highest university in England for graduates in employment, with 94.3% of our most recent UK undergraduates employed or in further study six months after completing their studies.

Christ Church is the number one choice for local people looking to study at university in Kent (2010 UCAS).

We are the South East’s largest provider of courses for public service careers (outside of London).

2012 is the University’s Golden Jubilee, reflecting on 50 years of higher education and innovation.